A TRINITY College Dublin law student has received a suspended five-year prison sentence for operating a sophisticated hydroponics cannabis-growing factory.
Cian Ó Concubhair (25), Liscannor, Co Clare, had spent Christmas in prison awaiting sentence. He had pleaded guilty before Galway Circuit Criminal Court on December 14th to having cannabis with a street value of almost €50,000 for sale or supply at his rental address at Kinvara, Co Galway, on March 14th last year.
Judge Raymond Groarke said yesterday it was “exceptional in the extreme” to impose a suspended sentence on a person who pleaded guilty to a section 15 (A) offence, but Ó Concubhair had not been selling drugs on the open market, but rather had been supplying his friends and members of his own family.
The hearing in December was told that Ó Concubhair, who is studying law at Trinity College, was working as an apprentice stonemason when he began a hydroponics cannabis-growing factory a year before he was caught in March 2009.
He had bought cannabis seeds from a head shop in Dublin and had bought books and DVDs on how to grow cannabis. He told gardaí he was cultivating the plants for himself and his friends so they did not have to rely on criminal elements to get their supply.
Conal McCarthy, defending, said his client was now drug-free, was attending university and had not been selling the drugs to anyone other than his friends.